Happy Friday! Believe it or not, today marks the last day of summer vacation for us. My daughter’s school district began a new school calendar last year and school now starts in early August. Summer went so fast! We have a few fun things planned today (lunch at a favorite restaurant and a trip to the Discovery Museum) to mark the occasion.

I am running a week behind on French Fridays with Dorie due to a fun vacation and other out-of-town activities. I had actually hoped to get this post written before I left for my vacation, but it didn’t work out.

We only have a few desserts left to do, so we have been spreading them out a bit. The group recently tackled Gâteau Basque, a specialty of the Basque region of France (and I suppose it’s common in the Basque regions of Spain too…).

I am always amazed at the wonderful and different ways to use a few basic ingredients: flour, butter, sugar, egg, and vanilla. This time they came together as a soft cookie-like shortbread cake with a sweet filling of cherry jam.

I didn’t get a lot of help eating this one. My daughter enjoyed her piece quite a bit. My mother-in-law ate a piece while babysitting (I never heard if she liked it or not). My husband usually doesn’t consider a dessert without chocolate worth eating, so he didn’t have any.

Good thing I liked this cake! I loved the buttery, vanilla-y cake layers. The jam I chose was a little too sweet for my taste, but I enjoyed the mix of flavors. While the cherry jam is traditional, this would be wonderful with other jams too, particularly apricot or strawberry.

It really is amazing how those ingredients combine to make so many wonderful things. Even though I love chocolate, I think I may even like this sort of dessert even better – it’s rich and delicious without being a sugar bomb.